The estimable John C. Wright explains why Marvel and DC Comics are pursuing their present course:
What is happening is that the leaders at SJW Marvel would prefer to put Politically Correct nonsense and crap into bookstores for sale than real stories penned by good writers about heroic topics.
They do not know why. To them it looks like financial suicide.
I submit to your candid judgment that if you look at a man’s financial motives, you are not seeing the whole man. Man seeks money to buy bread, but man does not live by bread alone. No culture in the history of the world ever existed without rites and rituals and sacrifice to hidden powers greater than human life. For the communist East, that power was the material dialectic of history, a sort of science flavored goddess, who demanded the bloody sacrifice of world wars, gulags, mass starvation, and endless executions. In the democratic West, the greater power was God, and, to a lesser degree, the ideals of freedom. God demands righteousness; democracy demands civic virtue and the self sacrifice of soldiers and sailors.
Now, no honest Christian would burn a pinch of incense to Caesar, and call him a god, for any amount of money. Not even the threat of death stirs the heart of the martyr.
SJW Marvel look at themselves as martyrs.
They think their goddess, history, will reward them with victory over their enemies, the conservatives, who are the sole source of all greed and evil in the world. All they need do is burn, degrade, and insult the beloved heroes of comics, and turn them all into minorities. The loss of review means nothing to them. They do not want our money.
They want the reward of righteousness without being righteous. They want to be martyrs without paying the cost in blood. Political correctness allows them to do this. All they need do it take an industry and ruin it in the name of PC.
The destruction is deliberate. They regard it as a sacrifice. This is a death cult.
The retailers, on the other hand, signed up for no such sacred mission and they are extremely unhappy with it.
An exchange between direct market retailers and Marvel Comics editors became heated in the closing minutes of Marvel’s Retailer-Only panel at New York Comic Con 2017, starting after a unidentified retailer expressed concern about Marvel’s lenticular variants not selling well in his store.
Marvel executive editors Tom Brevoort and Nick Lowe fielded the question, thanking the obviously upset retailer for his feedback. However, the retailer cut Lowe short to express his distaste for Marvel’s recent trend of replacing or altering its existing characters.
The retailer specifically cited examples such as characters that don’t reflect the ethnicity, gender, or sexuality of their predecessors – specifically expressing his distaste for Iceman “kissing other men,” and Thor “becoming a woman.” The retailer’s complaints sparked an outcry among the other retailers present in the room, some echoing his frustration, with multiple attendees raising their voices to speak over each other.
The original speaker called for “creating new characters and not messing with the old guys. The old guys are solid,” while a second said that Marvel has “never replaced its characters like this.”
Lowe pointed out that the changing nature of the identities of characters was engrained in Marvel’s history, pointing out examples from James Rhodes to Frog Thor. The retailer responded that Marvel has “never replaced them all at once before,” going on to say that he has had Marvel Cinematic Universe fans come into his store to find Avengers comic books only to leave “when they see that Thor is a woman and Captain America is a black man.”
And what’s more, the social justice cancer has spread to the Marvel movies now.
The rot of Marvel Comics has finally crept into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not just the rot of Social Justice — the rot of mediocrity.
On paper the movie sounds awesome. Thor, the God of Thunder, must defend Asgard and the Nine Realms from Hela, the all-powerful Goddess of Death. However, he is stranded on the planet of Sakaar on the other side of the galaxy. Surviving a brutal gladiatorial arena, Thor gathers allies and makes his way home to prevent Ragnarok, the prophesized destruction of Asgard.
In execution, it was as stale as week-old popcorn. With a basic plot, forgettable dialogue and limp characters, I struggled to remain engaged with the movie, much less care about the story. The heart of the problem lies with the movie’s poor craftsmanship and its rejection of the mythic.
Well, that’s certainly interesting, don’t you think? I don’t know about you, but I love the smell of opportunity in the morning.
As well as the 20 percent of comics buyers who stopped buying comics over the last year. Sadly, we can’t count on Marvel continuing to implode, although it may well do so. Fortunately, Alonso’s co-conspirator, Brian Bendis, is now at DC Comics and we can be absolutely confident that he’ll be doing his best to sink DC in much the same way he helped sink Marvel.
